I feel like Thomas was trying to contribute to this conversation by making an intellectually substantive on-topic remark and then you kind of trampled over that with vacuous content-free tone-policing.
It’s not content free! I gave a bunch of examples of useful heuristics for navigating discussions of tribalism in my other comment, and Thomas did the opposite of most of them (named groups by things they didn’t like rather than things they stood for, avoid carelessly reifying group attitudes, avoid needlessly relitigating old conflicts).
I also don’t think it’s tone-policing. It’s about how we talk about a subject that humans are pretty biased about. Seems about as tone policing as if I said “let’s try to discuss the problem from many angles before proposing solutions” and then someone came in and proposed solutions and I pushed back on that. There is real advice about how to discuss difficult topics well and it’s not all centrally free speech violations.
I think the thing Zack meant was content-free was your response, to Thomas’ response, which didn’t actually explain the gears of why Thomas’ comment felt tramplingly bad.
I see! That makes sense. I hoped it was clear from the surrounding context in the thread, but I will endeavor in future to link to my comments elsethread for reference.
This was not my intention, though I could have been more careful. Here are my reasons
The original comment seemed really vague, in a way that often dooms conversations. Little progress can be made on most problems without pointing out the specific key reasons for them. The key point to make is that tribalism in this case doesn’t arise spontaneously based on identities alone, it has micro level causes which have macro level causes
I thought Ray’s wanted to discuss what to do for a broader communication strategy, so replying in shortform would be fine because the output would get >20x the views (this is where I could have realized LW shortform has a high profile now, and toned it down somehow), rather than open up the conversation here
I am also frustrated about tribalism and reporting from experience about what I notice in a somewhat exaggerated way. If there is defeatism this is the source, though I don’t think addressing it is impossible, I just don’t have any ideas
If people replied to me with object level twitterbrained comments about how eg everyone has to unite against Marc Andreessen I would be super sad. Hopefully we’re better than that.
The comment painted lots of groups of people with a broad brush, mainly associating them with a negative feelings that I don’t believe most of them experience very much or at all, it (I think?) implied it had named all the groups (while naming ~none of the groups I natively think of), and then said that naming groups wasn’t a problem to be worried about.
It’s not norm-violating, but IMO it was not a good move in the dance of “sanely discuss local politics”.
I’ve found it’s often actually better for group processing of ideas-and-emotions for there to be nonzero ranting about what you really feel in your heart even if not fully accurate. (This is also very risky, and having it be net-positive is tricky, but, often when I see people trying to dance around the venting you can feel it leaking through the veneer of politeness)
I think Thomas’s comment is slightly exaggerated but… idk basically correct in overall thrust, and an important gear? (I agree whenever you say “this group thinks X”, obviously lots of people in that group will not think X)
While the comment paints people with a negative brush, it does paint a bunch of different people in a negative brush, such that it’s more about painting the overall dynamic in a negative light than the individual people, in my reading.
I definitely agree it is not the best kind of comment Thomas could have written and I hope it’s not representative of the average quality of comment in this discussion, it just seemed to me the LW mod reactions to it were extreme and slightly isolated-demand-for-rigor-y.
(I do want this thread to be one where overall people are some kind of politically careful, but I don’t actually have that strong a guess as to what the best norms are. I view this as sort of the prelude to a later conversation with a better-set container)
I agree that ranting and emotional writing is part of a healthy processing of information in humans. Insofar as someone is ranting imprecisely and recklessly about groups and their attitudes, when trying to understand local politics, I wish that some care is taken to note that it’s not the default standard for comments, that it’s more likely to produce inaccuracies and be misleading, rather than to walk straight into it seemingly unaware of the line being crossed. It’s the standard thing about line crossing: the problem isn’t in choosing to cross the line, it’s in seemingly not being aware that there is a line at all.
I was aware there is some line but thought it was “don’t ignite a conversation that derails this one” rather than “don’t say inaccurate things about groups”, which is why I listed lots of groups rather than one and declined to list actively contentious topics like timelines, IABIED reviews, or Matthew Barnett’s opinions
I feel like Ray was trying to open up this conversation with respect and carefulness and then you kind of trampled over that.
I feel like Thomas was trying to contribute to this conversation by making an intellectually substantive on-topic remark and then you kind of trampled over that with vacuous content-free tone-policing.
It’s not content free! I gave a bunch of examples of useful heuristics for navigating discussions of tribalism in my other comment, and Thomas did the opposite of most of them (named groups by things they didn’t like rather than things they stood for, avoid carelessly reifying group attitudes, avoid needlessly relitigating old conflicts).
I also don’t think it’s tone-policing. It’s about how we talk about a subject that humans are pretty biased about. Seems about as tone policing as if I said “let’s try to discuss the problem from many angles before proposing solutions” and then someone came in and proposed solutions and I pushed back on that. There is real advice about how to discuss difficult topics well and it’s not all centrally free speech violations.
I think the thing Zack meant was content-free was your response, to Thomas’ response, which didn’t actually explain the gears of why Thomas’ comment felt tramplingly bad.
I see! That makes sense. I hoped it was clear from the surrounding context in the thread, but I will endeavor in future to link to my comments elsethread for reference.
This was not my intention, though I could have been more careful. Here are my reasons
The original comment seemed really vague, in a way that often dooms conversations. Little progress can be made on most problems without pointing out the specific key reasons for them. The key point to make is that tribalism in this case doesn’t arise spontaneously based on identities alone, it has micro level causes which have macro level causes
I thought Ray’s wanted to discuss what to do for a broader communication strategy, so replying in shortform would be fine because the output would get >20x the views (this is where I could have realized LW shortform has a high profile now, and toned it down somehow), rather than open up the conversation here
I am also frustrated about tribalism and reporting from experience about what I notice in a somewhat exaggerated way. If there is defeatism this is the source, though I don’t think addressing it is impossible, I just don’t have any ideas
If people replied to me with object level twitterbrained comments about how eg everyone has to unite against Marc Andreessen I would be super sad. Hopefully we’re better than that.
fwiw I thought Thomas’ comment was fine, if a bit defeatist-feeling.
The comment painted lots of groups of people with a broad brush, mainly associating them with a negative feelings that I don’t believe most of them experience very much or at all, it (I think?) implied it had named all the groups (while naming ~none of the groups I natively think of), and then said that naming groups wasn’t a problem to be worried about.
It’s not norm-violating, but IMO it was not a good move in the dance of “sanely discuss local politics”.
A few reasons I don’t mind the Thomas comment:
I’ve found it’s often actually better for group processing of ideas-and-emotions for there to be nonzero ranting about what you really feel in your heart even if not fully accurate. (This is also very risky, and having it be net-positive is tricky, but, often when I see people trying to dance around the venting you can feel it leaking through the veneer of politeness)
I think Thomas’s comment is slightly exaggerated but… idk basically correct in overall thrust, and an important gear? (I agree whenever you say “this group thinks X”, obviously lots of people in that group will not think X)
While the comment paints people with a negative brush, it does paint a bunch of different people in a negative brush, such that it’s more about painting the overall dynamic in a negative light than the individual people, in my reading.
I definitely agree it is not the best kind of comment Thomas could have written and I hope it’s not representative of the average quality of comment in this discussion, it just seemed to me the LW mod reactions to it were extreme and slightly isolated-demand-for-rigor-y.
(I do want this thread to be one where overall people are some kind of politically careful, but I don’t actually have that strong a guess as to what the best norms are. I view this as sort of the prelude to a later conversation with a better-set container)
I think the dynamic Thomas pointed to is more helpful and accurate than the specifics, which seem to me like inaccurate glosses.
I agree that ranting and emotional writing is part of a healthy processing of information in humans. Insofar as someone is ranting imprecisely and recklessly about groups and their attitudes, when trying to understand local politics, I wish that some care is taken to note that it’s not the default standard for comments, that it’s more likely to produce inaccuracies and be misleading, rather than to walk straight into it seemingly unaware of the line being crossed. It’s the standard thing about line crossing: the problem isn’t in choosing to cross the line, it’s in seemingly not being aware that there is a line at all.
I was aware there is some line but thought it was “don’t ignite a conversation that derails this one” rather than “don’t say inaccurate things about groups”, which is why I listed lots of groups rather than one and declined to list actively contentious topics like timelines, IABIED reviews, or Matthew Barnett’s opinions